GADGETWISE; Making Facebook More Secure, Even for Mr. Zuckerberg

By PAUL BOUTIN

Published: February 3, 2011

Last week, the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, found his personal account hacked. If it could happen to Mr. Zuckerberg, users realized, it could happen to anyone.

The most likely way for someone to gain access to an account would be to capture traffic on an insecure network, like a public Wi-Fi hotspot.

To help make Facebook more secure, the site is introducing a new encryption option that uses the same security technology that shopping sites employ to keep hackers from seeing credit card numbers.

To turn on secure Facebook browsing, log in to Facebook and click on Account in the upper right corner. Select Account Settings. On that page near the bottom, click on Account Security. If the new option has been made available to your account, the first option at the top will be Secure Browsing (https). Click that, then hit the blue Save button just below it. You're done.

HTTPS is not unbreakable, but cracking it is far more work than anyone is likely to do.

And while you are at it, change your password to one that's hard to guess.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.